


Pour la Peine

by WildandWhirling



Series: Between the Waves [3]
Category: 1789 - バスティーユの恋人たち | 1789: Les Amants de la Bastille - Takarazuka Revue, 1789: Les Amants de la Bastille - Various Composers/Attia & Chouquet
Genre: And by "someone" I mean "Olympe", Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Complicated Sibling Relationships, F/F, Grieving, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Let ! Solene ! Have ! Friends !, Male characters have been brutally fridged for the female characters' development, No Smut, Pining, Ronan's death is literally the only thing I'm taking from canon here, Sex Work, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Someone give Solene a warm blanket, TFW You meet your brother's beard at his funeral and then you run into his sugar daddy, Who also killed your father, Women's March to Versailles, rating just to be safe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2019-05-17 15:48:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14835237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildandWhirling/pseuds/WildandWhirling
Summary: Her brother is dead. For the last time, he has left her behind, and this time, she can’t follow him.In the wake of Ronan's death, Solène is left with more questions than answers, not the least of which is the intriguing woman who claims to be his former fiancée.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fallenidol_453](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallenidol_453/gifts).



> Inspired by fictorium's minific meme: "Z. An ending." It is neither "mini" nor am I necessarily sure it's strictly within the bounds of the original prompt, but here we are. 
> 
> (Full prompt list here: http://fictorium.tumblr.com/post/146970581000/send-me-characters-and-a-letter-and-ill-write)
> 
> This is a mixture of the various productions of 1789, with me drawing from everything I wanted. In general, a good rule of thumb to follow is that I took most of Olympe and Solene's parts from the French, Lazare and Ronan's from the Takarazuka (with a very, very generous helping of me reshaping canon into my own, gay image), and the costumes from the Toho because, let's face it, they smoked everyone else. 
> 
> I did make one major divergence from the French production in the sense that the Women's March to Versailles hasn't happened yet, given that they're called the *October* Days for a reason and even though applying historical accuracy to 1789 is a lost cause, a girl can try. I don't know what Solene was doing when Ronan came up to her to try and reconcile; basketweaving, fencing lessons, a very, very early form of synchronized swimming, you can take your pick.

Her brother is dead. For the last time, he has left her behind, and this time, she can’t follow him.

 

The fact is like a dull drum in Solene’s mind, beating on and on and on, never fully sinking in, but a sort of noise that is always there. She walks forward, hopeful, fearful, mind full of memories.

 

 _Fixe_ \--

 

She knows those glassy eyes, looking ahead towards something she can’t see. He is there, his body is there, cold and lifeless, still in a way he had never been in life, but it cannot breach through the barrier in her mind that says that her brother can’t be dead, that Ronan can’t be dead, not yet, not so soon, not before--

 

 _Fixe_ \--

 

She doesn’t pay attention to the shouts and sounds of thousands of shoes hitting stone as they storm the Bastille. There’s very little she’s capable of understanding, less that she cares about. She hears a woman’s screams, sees someone she’s never met before cradling the body, begging him not to go, however she hears it like someone underwater would, muted and unfocused as she feels the sob tearing her throat to shreds, collapsing onto the ground. Numerous hands reach out to clasp her as her fellow sisters in the night, the women who have been her only support for a year, reach out to comfort her, but she can barely feel their touches. When they finally take the body away, it finally sinks in that her brother is dead, and she is alone in the world.

 

 _Fixe_.

* * *

 

There is one comfort: Ronan is not dumped into a pauper’s grave, nameless, as their father had been. His friends are kind enough, rich enough to see to it. A small headstone is erected with his name, a birthdate that is somewhere close to accurate, and the phrase “Martyr to Liberty” inscribed beneath it. Being the sister to a martyr to liberty is the same as being the sister to any other dead man, she takes no comfort from it. There are others there, Desmoulins, Robespierre, Danton (who has the  _kindness_  to suggest they “forget their sorrows” together afterwards. With no word of payment, she refuses). 

 

There is a woman there, and as Solene looks at her, she tries to remember where she’s seen her before. Women like her generally aren’t seen in the streets where Solene works, unless they’re meeting a lover. She’s dressed like she has money, clothed in black damask, with small lace gloves on her hands and a black necklace drawn across her pale neck. Her brown hair is swept up from her face, with not a lock out of place. A middle-aged man is standing near her, clutching onto a cane, her husband, her father? Not long after the other three men leave, he hobbles over to the grave, gives one brief nod at it, and then goes off to a waiting carriage. 

 

The two women are alone, on opposite sides of the grave. She doesn’t know what brings her to stand by her side, curiosity, fascination. Either way, she is there, standing by the unknown woman’s side. There is a long moment of silence, and then finally the other woman speaks. 

 

“My name is Olympe,” she says, and Solene is surprised at how smooth her voice truly is, “Olympe du Puget.” 

 

“Solene Mazurier.” A pause. “He was my brother.” 

 

“He was my-“ Olympe halts, and Solene can see her struggle for a moment, “He was my fiancee.” It’s then that Solene remembers where she’s seen her before, when the Bastille fell and Ronan laid dying on the ground. She had been the one to hold him in her lap, screaming. She doesn’t offer more, however, and Solene doesn’t press. “He hadn’t told me about you.” There’s a nervousness to it, a hesitation to go too deeply lest she strike some long-buried family nerve. Solene’s profession is obvious in the cut and fabric of her clothing, and a woman of her social standing would have to know that Solene is not a woman to be paraded in salon rooms. How Ronan had ever managed to keep her interest, Solene will never know. Her brother was so…Ronan.

 

 “We had quarreled before his death.” Memories flood her mind of him coming up to her earlier that month, desperate, pleading, and how she had refused him and turned away. She was furious then, at him for his abandonment and his hypocrisy, at the world, but now…

 

“As had we.” There’s a brief, awkward moment of silence, and then they both begin to laugh. At first, it’s uncomfortable and nervous, the kind of laugh that is done when someone has no other option to fill the silence. Then, it quickly descends into a genuine laugh, and she doesn’t know when she’s laughed like this and she can’t stop. When she stops to wipe at the tears that are falling freely from her eyes, she realizes that sometime in the whole mess either she had taken hold of Olympe’s hand or she had taken hold of hers. There should be guilt, she knows. Laughing at her brother's funeral, at _him_ isn't respectful. But what would there be if there wasn't laughter? Her returning to her dirty apartment room, curling up into a ball, and waiting for the night to come so she can go about her business and pretend that things are normal again? Avoiding the other women because, as kind as they can be, there comes a time when being comforted requires too much energy? 

 

Solene’s hand falls down at her side. “I never understood him.” She almost wonders if Olympe will take her hand again, as she had before, but she knows that it is not the kind of thing to be done. They are not friends, after all, and women like her tend to avoid women of Solene’s profession as much as possible. 

 

Even though she doesn’t take Solene’s hand again, Olympe’s fingers brush lightly against her knuckle, and Solene wonders if it is intentional or not. “Nor did I.” She glances at her, and Solene catches a glimpse of dark brown eyes that, in the sunlight, seemed to be tinted with honey. 

 

They stay like that, in a silence that is not just silence, until Olympe joins the older man in his carriage and Solene is truly alone for the first time. 

 

She turns to leave, her thoughts filled of the woman with her perfume and her smooth voice and her pink lips, but as she does so, she sees a form emerging from the shadows. Carefully, she darts behind a tombstone, as Lazare de Peyrol comes into view. Hatred and disgust fill her as she looks at him, the man who deprived her of two members of her family, two people she had  _loved_. Who she loves still. He should be the one in the grave, not Ronan. There are rumors that, for his part in suppressing the people, he is going to go to trial soon, that he’s been suspended from his position in the army, that most of his troops have abandoned him, but it’s a cold comfort. Peyrol could walk free if she could have her father or brother back, for all she cares. She is tired of bloodshed. 

 

He looks down at the grave, long and hard, and then, barely audibly, she hears two words, and if her hatred of him was not complete before, it is now. 

 

_“Little fool.”_

 

That is when she wants to strangle him herself. It wasn’t enough for him to kill Ronan, but now he intends to gloat over him? Her brother was a naive idiot, yes, but  _he_  has no right to call him that. He has no right to call him that, he has no right to be here, he has no right to be alive. Not when so many others aren’t. 

 

But then he closes his eyes and kneels down in front of the headstone, pressing his forehead against the stone, and he looks like a man in prayer. He stays like that, it could be an hour, it could be a day, but he stays, and Solene watches. 

 

When he rises, she moves to leave, only to trip on a stray stone she hadn’t seen before, hitting the ground. She quickly recovers, grateful that her ankle wasn’t twisted in the fall, however he’s now fully aware of her presence. He turns to her, and they hold each other’s gaze. 

 

Solene straightens her back under his scrutinizing glare, and there’s a brief recognition in his eyes, quickly replaced by something she can’t place. Her profession has made her an expert in reading the human face in all its variations, from arousal to amusement to anger, but she can’t place him. He opens his mouth briefly, something at the tip of his tongue, but then turns and walks away briskly. 

 

Solene rushes after him, “Monsieur de Peyrol! Monsieur de Peyrol!” 

 

No matter how much Solene tries to pursue him, he doesn’t turn or acknowledge her further, climbing into a nearby carriage. 

 

Shortly afterwards, the rumor flies through the streets that the Comte de Peyrol has disappeared. The usual belief is that he’s betrayed the people again, that he has emigrated like the Comte d’Artois, that he will help to raise an army against the French people. They are itching for his blood, wanting him to join Foulon on the lantern. More death, more pain, on and on and on. 

 

They never find him, and Solene will spend the rest of her life wondering what he might have told her. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

She is leaning up against the wall of a building near her apartment in Rue Saint Denis, looking out at the huge stone arch that towers over the area imposingly while hoping for customers when they next meet one another. It is August now, late in the afternoon, the first hints of dusk creeping through the city. Workers are beginning to amble home, bodies covered in sweat from the work they’ve done under the hot summer’s sun, a few of them eyeing her before turning away. The artisans and their wealthier customers are more discreet, masking their interest beneath scowls when they escort their wives and sweethearts along the street. Of the two groups, they’re the ones that she has the most confidence will come when the night falls and her day begins. She remembers a few of them that other women have warned about, the ones who think because she sells her time she sells her body, and she makes a note that, if they return, to find a way to get out of it. Dogs bark and roll together in the street, covering themselves in dirt, the church bells toll in the distance to mark a new hour, and the steady, deafening roll of wagons and carriages continues.

 

And in the chaos of everyday life, the Little Cat runs into her, only muttering a quick “Sorry!” before dashing off, Solene finding herself clutching at the wall in an attempt to keep herself upright.

 

Everyone knows the girl, in some way or another. Everyone from washer-women on the Seine to the scribblers at Palais Royal know who she is, not least of all the various policemen who can often be seen trailing behind her before she ducks into some long forgotten alley or simply seems to disappear into the ground itself. She has no parents, at least as far as anyone can remember, but she has been more or less adopted by the other women, so Solene is well used to her company, with the girl occasionally sitting down with them at a tavern before leaving them for someplace new.

 

This time, though, it is not the police who trailed behind her, but another girl of roughly the same age, who is a blur of blue as she races after her. “Charlotte, wait for me!”

 

“You’ll have to catch me first!”

 

Solene finds herself being supported by a pair of slim arms as she hears a familiar, smooth voice close to her ear. “I am sorry for them.” She turns, coming face to face with Olympe, who gives a slight smile at seeing her. “Mademoiselle Mazurier! It is so good to see you again.”

 

“Mademoiselle du Puget.” She has not forgotten the name, despite how briefly they met. She doesn’t have the luxury of living in her thoughts that others do, but, sometimes, when she sees a well-dressed woman on the street or a flash of brown hair in the sunlight, she imagines that it’s her.

 

In a sterner voice, Olympe calls out, “Charlotte! Françoise! Come back here!”

 

She could tell Olympe that it’s hopeless to cage the Little Cat; but at the moment she’s too caught up in being in Olympe’s arms to speak. She feels a happy, contented warmth go through her at the contact, so different from how she’s normally touched. Olympe rights her soon, and she recovers, but she can feel her skin burn where Olympe had touched her. To her surprise, both Charlotte and the other girl return, the former skipping along, hands on her hips, while the other looked considerably more subdued, bowing her head as she trudges back. Now that she’s slowed down, Solene can see the contrast she makes to Charlotte, wearing a silk dress that in everything but color is a match to the pink striped gown Olympe wears, albeit one with a fine coat of dust around the skirt.

 

They both look guiltily at Solene.

 

“What do you say?”

 

The Little Cat interjects, “I said I was sorry!” At a glare from Olympe that is more exasperated than stern, she relents. “I’m sorry. I didn’t look at where I was going.”

 

The other one, the one Olympe called “Françoise,” keeps her head bowed. “We really are. It was not our intent to cause you any harm and I’m sorry for not noticing that you were in distress.”

 

It’s been ages since anyone’s bothered to apologize to her; she almost doesn’t know what to do. “I’ll survive.” Then, realizing that their class tends to want more from this sort of thing she adds, “Your apology is accepted.”

 

Françoise leans over to Olympe and, in a whisper that is loud enough for Solene to hear, says, “Will you tell Father?”

 

Olympe shakes her head gently, “You know I wouldn’t.”

 

Françoise looks like she might say something further, but Charlotte’s tugging at her arm, “Come on, Françoise!”

 

At an encouraging nod from Olympe, she runs off to join the other girl. As they do, Olympe calls out. “Charlotte, be careful! Take care of her!”

 

“I will!” Comes the faint answer.

 

Olympe sighs and leans against the wall, sharing a small smile with Solene that makes her heart skip a beat. “I love my sister, but sometimes she is harder for me to handle than children with no relation to me.”

 

“The Little Cat is hard enough to handle on her own. I’ve never known her to stay in one place.”

 

“Together, I fear what they’re capable of.” She looks at Solene apologetically, "I am truly sorry for them, they didn’t mean it.”

 

“Think nothing of it. They are still children,” Solene says, “They don’t think before rushing. It’s the privilege of childhood.” A pause. “We were…like that once. Ronan and I.” When they found moments in-between chores that caused their eyes to sting from sweat, when Ronan hadn’t taken out additional time to work on another farm to possibly bring in some more money, when they had been allowed to be children. “We had a whole world of our own at our command.”

 

Class and education didn’t matter in the world of Make-Believe, where the two of them ruled supreme, nor did sickness and death. They could adventure to their heart’s content, going over every rock and tree to see if there was long-buried treasure hidden by giants centuries ago and fleeing from vampires and werewolves when the night began to fall. (It was strange, she thought, how what she once feared was now one of her closest allies.)

 

“I was the only child of my mother and father until Françoise’s birth, when I was eight years old. It came as something of a shock.” Olympe makes a half shrug, holding her hands out helplessly as she does so. "I do my best to look after her, especially since the Bastille, however...”

 

“There is only so much you can do for them.” To distract herself from where her mind is taking her, she adds, “The Bastille?”

 

Olympe nods hesitantly, her next words slow and hushed as she smooths out her skirts, barely looking Solene in the eye. “My father was the King’s Lieutenant there, second only to the Governor, Monsieur De Launay. When the Bastille fell, he narrowly escaped with his life. If it hadn’t been for Ronan…”

 

Solene remembers the man in the uniform that Ronan jumped in front of to stop the bullets from Peyrol’s men, putting one more sliver of the fuller picture into place. (It reminds her of the time the three of them, her father, Ronan, and her had gone to the big cathedral at Chartres, looking at the huge stained glass pictures there, when Solene wondered how a group of people could spend their lives hunched over _glass_ without worrying about anything else. So many small pieces of glass, painted and fixed together to create a picture, but still broken and fragmented and _fragile_ , with snakelike black lines showing where they had been put into place beside each other.)

 

“Even then,” Olympe says, “There were many who wanted him dead—Who want him dead still. He had to escape in disguise. I thought for a moment that he would die as well.” Olympe’s fingers tighten around her skirt, and Solene notices that her knuckles have turned white. She looks down and, noticing the condition she’s in, relaxes. “Since then, our family’s been in chaos. Papa hasn’t been reassigned anywhere, even though he has applied for a pension and reimbursement for his losses.”

 

Olympe looks up, her eyes meeting Solene’s before they both look away. “That is why you didn’t tell your father about this.” Solene gestures to the two girls playing in the street together.

 

“She deserves some normalcy,” Olympe’s lips tighten, and Solene can’t help but notice them again, marking the lines and curves of them in her mind. “And I cannot provide that for her when I am on duty in court. Charlotte makes her happier than anything else, I could never take that away from her when she is already in the middle of such turmoil, nor could I take her from Charlotte. She has so little as it is.”

 

“‘On duty?’” Solene can’t help but tease her a little, "I had no idea that I was speaking to a decorated soldier.”

 

Olympe dips her head, “I work as an under-governess with the royal children under the supervision of Madame de Tourzel, though with the Dauphin…it has been difficult, recently.”

 

Solene can’t imagine. Two children, brought up without any idea of what it’s like to go hungry, surrounded by people who will wait on them every hour of the day. There is a distinct edge in her voice when she asks, “And how are the royal children? What is it like to care for the children _destined_ by God to rule France?”

 

“The same as it is for any child, Mademoiselle Mazurier. They need love and guidance the same as Charlotte or Françoise, they sometimes cry when they scrape their knee, and they are just as fragile in their illnesses. It is just a pity that all don’t receive it.” Her lips tighten again, and Solene notices the quirk, notices that she seems to do it when she is debating something, as if she is fighting the words from coming out. "It’s an injustice.”

 

"Not words I'd expect from a royal governess." Though, when she thought of it, the more she saw of Olympe du Puget, the more of a mystery she was. She was a noble born woman, daughter of one of the most important jailers in the Bastille, who spent her days in the court of the Austrian, tending to her children, and yet she was...attached to Solene's brother. How had they even met?

 

"I might not always have the freedom to express myself as I would like, but I do have the freedom of my own thoughts. Growing up, Papa always taught me the equality of humanity. Regardless of where we come from or what our education is, we all come into this world the same and," she looks at Solene, her eyes so sharp and so dark that it is enough to make her lose all the breath in her body, "We all leave it the same as well. Everyone deserves fair treatment."

 

Solene wonders if she and Ronan had discussed this, at one point, long conversations on the rights of man, but it doesn't seem to fit her brother and, with the knowledge that they'd quarreled before his death, she considered it unlikely. Her brother rarely had the patience for debate, even when they were children.

 

Wherever her mind is flowing at the moment is disrupted as they both turn and look to where Françoise and Charlotte continue to play, running around the area. Françoise has caught Charlotte now, who gives a happy shriek. Olympe looks up in alarm, her face bone white, but when she sees that all is well, she returns, the little smile that seems habitual to her returning.

 

“How did you meet her? The Little Cat?”

 

“It is impossible to simply meet Charlotte, rather, she meets you. I first knew of her because of my sister; they met one day and met for months before it was discovered. It was impossible to keep them away from one another, and so I would occasionally escort them around town. She has been a great help, in the past. Since Françoise and her became friends, I try to help her whenever I can, with reading, clothes, and food, such as she will accept. I have a small salary with the Queen and no real use for it."

 

That reminds her of something she'd wondered when she saw the look on her face when she heard Charlotte and Françoise playing. "Were you with him when he died?" Olympe looks at her, and Solene realizes the “him” that she might have been referring to, so she clarifies. "The Dauphin?"

 

Olympe closes her eyes and nods. "It was expected. When I was first appointed to the post, I was given very strict warnings that the Dauphin was in ill health, but there was still some hope that he might yet recover, however...I should have done more. If I had simply looked harder-"

 

“I can’t believe that,” Solene says, and Olympe startles. Solene remembers that this is not the way that upper class women speak to one another, that they aren’t _equals_ , that she’s probably asked too many questions, that she’s spent too long here. Still, she adds, carefully, “You look after your sister, you look after your father, you look after the royal children, and you still take time to care for a child who has no relation to you. You seem, Mademoiselle du Puget, to care for _everything_.”

 

It is a wonder, Solene thinks, with all that she puts on herself, that she isn’t dead or mad yet. (A very unkind, quickly silenced part of her brain helpfully supplies that she _was_ engaged to Ronan.)

 

“I try to help those who have been kind to me, that is all.”

 

“Well, what’s this?” Charlotte somehow pops up right between them. “Have we missed anything?”

 

“No,” Olympe says, and then smiles at her and Françoise, who is close behind the other girl and looking fatigued, “No, we were just admiring the sunset together.”

 

Solene notices the way Olympe’s hand lightly pets Charlotte’s hair as the two girls join them and falls a little in love with her then, seeing this woman who spends most of her time caring for children with everything and the rest caring for a child with nothing. It would be easy to kiss her, looking like this, the sun bleeding around them, easier still to lean over just an inch or two and let their hands brush. She swallows it down, feels it stick uncomfortably in her throat, and they stay as they are. She was Ronan’s fiancee, and for all her brother’s flaws, she’ll respect that much.

 

It isn’t like she’ll see the woman again, anyway.

 

And, after this, night will fall, the stars will dance above the lights of the city, and Solene will go onward, as she always has.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historically speaking, there is very little material around on the du Puget family, despite the odd position they occupied between the Ancien Régime and the Revolution. It seems like the Chevalier du Puget had a son and a daughter, from what I've been able to glean from various Google-Translated articles, books, and websites cobbled together (Because I'm a Serious Scholar™) All that's mentioned of the son is that he emigrated in 1790, while the daughter, Françoise-Renée Riviere de Puget, pops up in a few genealogical sites. For the sake of bending 1789's already dubious connection to history, I decided to simply take out the son, plop Olympe in as the oldest (probably born immediately following her parents' marriage in 1770), and keep Françoise's age roughly the same, though that's probably as close as I'll get to the actual historical figure.
> 
> Also, since the Takarazuka version decided to put the Mazuriers in the Beauce, I took the liberty of dropping them in Chartres because I'm nothing if not a slut for stained glass. It might have been a long trip for the family, depending on exactly where they were located (along with however much time it would have taken Papa Mazurier to do whatever business drove him to Chartres in the first place), but it's semi-feasible. More or less.


	3. Chapter 3

The law is clear: It’s illegal for women to ply their trade inside a tavern or on the streets. The men who interpret the law are less sure on the matter, finding that women of the world can be useful for leads on a case or for relieving the cares of a hard day’s work. And there’s no law in France that says anything about a group of women sitting at a tavern together, talking with each other. Whatever happens next depends on the men involved; they have nothing to do with it. 

 

“I don’t want any trouble, Mazurier." The tavern girl, Colette, who is a mass of red curls above a dress and apron, wipes down a table with an old rag, “Now, I have my eye on that one,” she nods towards a man sitting alone at one of the tables, nursing an ale over a meager plate of fish and some half-chewed bread, "I have my rent due tomorrow, and if you steal this dupe from me I’ll tear out your eyes and throw them in the Seine. Am I clear?” 

 

“Really Colette, when have I ever caused trouble?” Solene asks, raising a brow.

 

The other woman just shakes her head and goes back to her work, “They’re at the usual table. Some fancy piece is with them this time. And remember: Stay off my dupe.” 

 

Solene makes her way to the long table of dark wood in the corner, which is brightly lit by the small candelabra of wood hanging above it, as well as a roaring fireplace with a huge cauldron hanging over, where she’s greeted with a round of “Solene!”s from the women assembled there. 

 

“Glad to see you could come.” Marguerite is a tough woman, the kind usually seen working as a fishwife along the Seine, carrying the large baskets filled to the brim with fish in their strong arms. Like Solene, a life under the sun has blistered and burned her skin, matching tones with her light brown hair. She was married, once, but when her husband became jealous, threatening her whenever she so much as stepped out of doors, she ran away, finding that dealing with a hundred men who posed the threat of a moment was easier than dealing with a single one who held the threat of a lifetime. 

 

“Where’s Marie?” Solene asks. 

 

“Kid’s got colic, she’s spending all her time either working the dupes or tending to it."

 

Athenais sits at the head of the table, opposite Solene. She is older than the others, closer to forty than thirty, wearing the silver hairs in her head with the same confidence that she wears the faded lilac court gown that brushes against the knees of the two women sitting next to her and the white powder that covers her face like snow over a valley. She’d been lucky in the twilight years of Louis XV, catching the eye of the old lecher for a few nights before he moved on elsewhere and then taking her consolation with the lesser nobility. It was there that she’d taken the name Athenais, the ribbon girl Sophie becoming the aristocracy’s most favored plaything for the season until, finally, her extensive gambling debts forced her to settle for managing a small brothel that bordered somewhere on the line of respectability, enjoying the tacit toleration of the police in exchange for certain services rendered. She sits there like a queen holding court, her back to a shelf holding a collection of pewter plates, confident even as the sounds of a dog chasing a cat can be heard throughout the place.

 

Susanne sits nearest her, to the right, almost obscured from the heavy skirts of the other woman. In contrast to Athenais, she’s young, barely 17, barely fitting into the dress she wears to make herself seem older than she is (It’s strange to Solene that, at her age, she was in training to be a farmer’s wife, her father and Ronan had been alive, and there’d been no signs that their lives would follow anything more or less than the patterns of the weather and the seasons. The period after Lent to marry, November or December to give birth if the banns were a little rushed, then the christening if they were lucky or the wordless, unsanctified funeral if they were not. Then, when the child would be weaned, the cycle would start again and again until her body either refused to do it again or she died.) Susanne's father died a year or two ago of a sudden sickness, and so her mother, lacking the ability to spin straw into gold and already working her fingers to the bone as a washerwoman on the Seine, put her daughter into the only type of work that was left in order to support herself and her two small siblings. 

 

“So, Solene,” Marguerite says, resting her head on her hand, “I’ve heard that you were having quite the tryst the other day, with that aristo girl.” 

 

There are a number of “oooooooohhhhssss” from those assembled at the table, as they all suddenly become young girls waiting to find out who had managed to steal a kiss during a festival. 

 

Solene puts a hand on her hip in a great show of sternness, using the other to gesture at the table, “Before I’ve even sat down?” 

 

“You may sit, Madame,” Emilie says from her seat on the other side of Athenais, gesturing grandly to the rickety stool that had its best days some fifty years ago. She’s a year or two Solene’s junior, with hair somewhere between brown and gold. Solene doesn’t know as much about her, though she has heard it said that she once worked in the theatre, picking up the trade there before going to the streets. The older woman turns her small, snub nose up at the movement, sniffing audibly even as she says nothing. 

 

Solene sits down in front of the fire, the heat warming and soothing her back, which is slightly sore after being held against a wall all day, holding herself up to the table more through force of will than any effort of the stool, which teeters dangerously as she applies herself to it. 

 

Emilie leans forward, putting her hand beneath her chin. “So, the aristo girl.” 

 

“Is a friend,” Solene says. 

 

“Oh, a _friend_?” 

 

“Who was engaged to my brother and currently works with  _L_ ' _Autrichienne._ ” It’s like she’s a child again, being asked whether she likes a boy or not simply because she wants to be friends. She doesn't know how many friendships she’d lost because of presumption, whether from the small circle made up of the village children or from the boys themselves. 

 

"Oh,  _L_ ' _Autrichienne!"_ Emilie says, rolling her eyes for exaggerated effect. "And we all know where her interests lie. No wonder she's taken such a liking to you, Solene." 

 

“Your brother landed a woman like that?” Marguerite says, her face a mixture between disbelief and a touch of outrage. 

 

“I don’t know; he _was_ cute,” Susanne says, with no small degree of wistfulness. "I'm sure there were many women who'd have taken him."

 

“How would you know what she's like?” Solene asks, hoping to clear her brain forever of the words "Cute" and "Ronan" being put together. She knew her brother was a favorite target for girls, even back at their home village, though most knew fully well that he had different tastes. (Then again...Olympe's existence as his fiancée did complicate that image. Perhaps she was an exception. Solene could certainly understand it if she was.)

 

“The city is full of little eyes and ears, some of whom are easily bribed,” Marguerite says. 

 

“Charlotte.” 

 

“Charlotte,” Emilie says, "She said she was like 'a princess from a story’ and that you talked for hours, walking hand in hand.”  

 

“It’s no business of yours if I did.” 

 

“We’re all just curious, Solene,” Marguerite says, “All the time we’ve known you, you’ve never talked about your family until your brother showed up, no friends, no lovers. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you came into creation one day, fully grown.” 

 

“It’s true, we talked. She’s…different, from the rest." She finds herself smiling at the memory of their hands touching, feeling the brush of their skin even as the only thing she touches is the hard wood of the table, "Kinder, with something sharper underneath all the lace and ribbons. And she is...very beautiful. With one look at her-" At the stares of everyone around the table, who look at her as if she'd suggested an expedition to find the Northwest Passage in their petticoats, she shrugs, "She doesn't turn up her nose at us. Of course I'd like her company. The friendship of anyone close to Ronan is important to me.” 

 

Athenais sniffs, obviously put out at not being the focus of the conversation for more than four sentences. “And what would a woman like that want with you, besides as a charity cause? A common drab, uneducated, filthy as you are? Oh, this street urchin of yours tells a charming tale, Emilie, but it’s a fantasy. The aristocracy doesn’t care for any but their own, at heart, and the amusements of a moment or two.” 

 

The four of them, Susanne, Emilie, Solene and Marguerite turn to her, having more or less forgetting her intrusion. Solene feels her temper prick. She isn’t sure which part motivates her more, treating her as if she’s common dirt or treating Olympe like a fickle, mindless caricature of herself, as her fingernails clench around the edge of the table. They were both raised poor, and they'd both made their money on their back to eat. If she'd not done anything to filthy herself when she was doing it for a king for a chestful of ruby and emerald necklaces, rings, and bracelets that she'd later sell off to pay for her gambling debts, Solene hadn't by doing it for a piece of crusty bread to keep her alive during the winter when she was friendless on the Parisian street. She doesn't need the approval of men who've spent their entire lives rolling in gold to cleanse herself, or of any man. (She's reminded, vaguely, of her argument with Ronan, when they'd been reunited in Paris.)  

 

“Perhaps she seeks my friendship because she’s tired of dealing with women like _you_ , Madame." 

 

“Me? I have spent the last decades of my life tending to the needs of the aristocracy. Every whim and desire, for some of the greatest men in the land. You know, I once met your old friend the Comte de Peyrol,” Athenais said, her voice somewhat absent but with a hint of eagerness underneath. “The other officers in his regiment put together all their funds so that I could make a man of him when I was staying at Madame Gourdan’s establishment.” 

 

“Really?" Susanne asks, and as she does so Athenais’ lips curl upward as she gets her chance to reminisce over her days of glory. “What was he like? Was he cruel?” 

 

Athenais gives a throaty laugh even as Solene’s stomach drops at the reference. She is never going to be free of the man, even here. And Athenais knew it. Marguerite seems to realize the drop in Solene’s mood, her hand clasping Solene’s shoulder in a sign of solidarity.

 

“Oh, I had my fears, especially at seeing the price they were paying. The aristocracy, you know, can be very peculiar, especially when they believe they’re entitled to what they've not paid for, come what may. But, I am nothing if not a woman of my word, and so I went up to my room and waited. Much to my surprise, what should come up but a little skinny colt of a boy, serious as a castrated monk, who took off his hat when he entered in, as formal as you’d like! I tried to coax him, but he would only pace about, looking at the floor!”

 

Susanne is leaning as closely as she can without being assaulted by a pannier. “Did you get him eventually?” 

 

“Oh, I was able to get him to stop his pacing, but I couldn’t lead him so much as five feet near the bed. We ended up playing chess for the rest of the night. It was the hardest pay I ever received, I’ll say that much. Give me a few minutes on a man’s cock anytime over that. But, the officers were happy, I was happy, and he was happy, in his fashion, so it was a successful night.” She raises her heavy mug, as if giving a toast, "The most hated man in France, and the only man I've known who'd rather look at the floor than a naked woman." 

 

Solene feels the weight in her stomach twist and turn and suddenly she needs to be out of there, as something seems to brush at her mind that she can’t trace, some feeling that she can’t place and isn’t sure if she wants to. It’s hard to think of Peyrol as young. It’s hard to think that he was born and had a childhood and was once a young man who was more legs than not just like Ronan had been and that he’d once been nervous as he faced the possibility of going to bed with a woman for a first time. It’s hard for her to put him as a human being, even one who passes in and out of her life like the dupes. Peyrol _shouldn’t_ be a human being. He’s a dog, a machine that does as its master commands it to and then leaves a trail of destruction. That is all she knows of him, that is all she cares.  

 

Barely, she notices a sly look appear on Athenais' face, like a cat sizing up a bird, and her voice seems lower, “That’s the advantage of working in a fine establishment. You interact with a a higher quality of clientele than some scum off the street. And there’s safety involved in it. We look after our own, you know. You’d be safe, and within a month or so your earnings—“ 

 

“Will be nothing compared to being up to your knees in debt,” Solene, who’d been drifting in and out of the familiar points of Athenais’ speech, finds herself snapping. “But you don’t mention that, do you?” 

 

There are a few nods and murmurs of assent. 

 

Athenais looks unperturbed, smiling, “We only charge what we’re owed, and in exchange we clothe our girls, feed them, shelter them, and they still keep a good portion of their earnings, which, in the present state of the world, is more than most can say. Really, we are incredibly generous; the deal would be entirely in your favor, my dear. But, if you are persuaded otherwise…” She shrugs, “I suppose that there are others who could fill our rooms easier. There are always girls coming in from the provinces. Look at your friends here; their stomachs provide testimony enough, I should think. ” 

 

As Susanne opens her mouth to respond one way or another, Solene stands up and walks off, not bothering to see what happens next. That’s up to them; she won’t witness it one way or another. She finds herself joined on the narrow, uneven cobblestone streets shortly thereafter by Marguerite, Emilie, and Susanne. 

 

“So, you’ve decided against becoming women of fortune?” She asks, a little smirk on her mouth as she hears Athenais squawking in the background. 

 

“We like the company out here better,” Emilie gives her a friendly shove.

 

“And besides, someone’s got to help you stay out of trouble, and there’s no doing that if we’re in her fancy house tending to _men of the aristocracy.”_   Marguerite mimics Athenais’ high airs and flourishes, earning a chuckle from Solene. 

 

“Do you not think it was rash, to reject her offer so quickly?” Susanne says. “She did seem kind about the whole thing."   


Emilie shrieks with laughter. "I'm sure a fox looks kind to the chicken, doesn't mean the chicken's happy for the company in the end." 

 

"To have a steady roof over our heads, and with the money, my family—“ 

 

“Did you want to?” Marguerite asks. 

 

Susanne pauses, as if considering her own choice for the first time, “Not particularly.” 

 

Standing there, not looking them in the eye as she clutches her shawl about her beneath the faint, pale light of a street lamp, she suddenly looks very young. Even though it’s been a long time since she’s been in the position to do anything like this, at least since the last of the Mazurier siblings besides herself and Ronan died, she brushes her hand against the girl’s cheek. 

 

“Don’t ever allow yourself to owe anyone anything. No matter what they promise, no matter how they promise it. Don’t allow yourself to be bought because then, you’re at their mercy.”  

 

“But-“ Susanne says, but by that time Solene’s already walking away. 

 

“Don’t ever owe anyone anything,” Solene repeats, walking into the night air, ignoring the feeling of someone's eyes on her, “It will only lead to pain.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much to report here, history wise, given we're dealing entirely with nonhistorical characters here. 
> 
> Tavern workers and women who operated independently WERE often subjected to police scrutiny, whereas brothels that tended to the elite were allowed to operate. (Which is the opposite of the situation in England at the time, where brothels were banned but women could operate independently, not that that particularly stopped any of the great madames of the day.) 
> 
> Technically speaking, I had my doubts over whether the other women would know about the possibility of Olympe/Solene, given the general "hush hush" nature of lesbianism at this time, but! This is also when pamphlets accusing Marie Antoinette of having an affair with Madame de Polignac and the Princesse de Lamballe were circulating, the public was having a greater consciousness of this sort of thing, and they'd certainly be up to date on THAT if nothing else. And since Olympe's an upper class woman on good terms with Solene, talking to her when she'd normally be on the job...I made the guess that they'd draw the appropriate lines. If nothing else, just to tease Solene. 
> 
> The term I use to describe a sex worker's client, "dupe" is my attempt at directly translating the contemporary "micheton." I had a devil of a time alternating between that and the contemporary English term "cull," but ultimately decided on "dupe" since it is actually connected to a term from the time AND place, though it's also used with the knowledge that a lot of the sources that are accessible on the terminology were written by men. So, as far as what women of the time would have ACTUALLY used, I have no idea. 
> 
> Also, completely minor as a detail, but Susanne's meant to be the one woman who rubs up against Ronan at the beginning of the Takarazuka version of La Nuit M'appelle and who he accidentally knocks down, hence how she's familiar with him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After ages of agonizing over this super-long chapter, I finally had the brilliant idea to just...split it. I know, groundbreaking, right?
> 
> I think over the course of writing the next 2-3 chapters, I ended up consulting at least 5-7 primary sources on the October Days, as well as several secondary sources. An attempt was made at accuracy, but in the long run, the one thing that unites accounts of it is that everyone tried to deflect blame onto someone else, as royalists and revolutionaries alike tried to make sense of what they were seeing. 
> 
> Roughly speaking, it's as historically accurate as you're going to get for a musical that canonically mentions buses as existing in this universe.

Against her will, time passes. The Comte de Peyrol shows his face for the first time since the Bastille at his trial for his actions on the 12th of July, and he is acquitted. Solène doesn’t have the energy to be disappointed, knowing in her bones long before that no matter how much they talk about equality, an aristocrat is never going to be executed for crimes with the King’s stamp on them.  He hadn’t been before, he wouldn’t now.

 

She is part of the crowd that sees him leave the court. His face is as expressionless as the day of the funeral, haughty, still, but pale as a sheet, the blue coat seeming to hang off of him even as there’s still not a hair out of place and his black boots shine in the daylight. He doesn’t notice her this time, just as he doesn’t notice anything or anyone else, just puts one foot in front of the other as he pushes into his carriage, as if the rest of the world has ceased to exist to him, or he's going to dinner with some aristocratic woman rather than being surrounded by a mob of thousands who would see him on a lantern if they could. Maybe after so many years of being around death, his compassion numbed like an arm that’s been laid on for too long, he’s stopped caring about even his own. Or (more likely), even after the Bastille, he still refuses to believe that a great man like him can be killed by _commoners_. The crowd murmurs and jeers, she holds the anger inside of her, like a small cinder that burns her hand, holds it and tosses it onto a pile of a hundred more, letting it smolder silently.  

 

Solène pushes thoughts of that day to the back of her mind, of him, of the courthouse, of Mademoiselle du Puget, of the sight of golden light bathing the Rue Saint-Denis, of the lonely graveyard, even of the tavern and Athenais’ horrible white powdered face, focuses instead on her hungry stomach. The cost of bread is high, and customers who can barely afford to feed themselves will spare little more than a look of derision towards her. The hunger is everywhere, every home, every minute, so that it feels as if she’s being devoured on the inside. The others try to help, they pool together their earnings, but even that can scarcely feed two of them combined on small portions, much less the group. The hope that had taken hold after the Storming of the Bastille, as faint as it ever was (she is not her brother, she doesn’t believe in castles in the air), is now all but gone. The aristocrats roll in wealth in Versailles while they are lucky to eat for the day. Every gesture towards unity the King makes, the Queen and her men block. The men who claim to speak with them sit limply by, gutless. Nothing has changed.

 

Rumors circulate in the air, from person to person, in the alleys, in the streets, in the taverns, each one worse than the last. That the aristocrats are hoarding grain, that they mean to starve the people of Paris out, pay them back for the 14th of July, that the bakers are in on it, are deliberately raising the prices so they can profit on it.

 

It is a rainy morning in October when they learn of the orgy, where rich officers stuff their faces and stamp on the cockades with the King and Queen while she has had to go two days without bread in her stomach, and it is a rainy day in October when it is finally _enough_. This is the last insult. Nothing can be done while the King is at Versailles, surrounded by those leeches.

 

They gather together all of them, marketwomen, cleaners, prostitutes, fishwives, women who would never have looked her in the eye during the day and women she’s known and fought beside for months, walking with one step and one mind. They stamp through the mud, skirts tearing and staining, the rain falling steadily over them. Solène’s hair is undone, tangling and falling about her face, but she doesn’t care. Marie, the woman who had been absent from the tavern that one day, brings her infant with her, gently hushing its crying by releasing a breast for it to feed on during the long march to the Hôtel de Ville. Some of the men laugh at them along the streets, pointing and poking at them as if they were animals in a zoo before trying to edge into their crowd.

 

 _Furies._ That’s what they call them, these men who mock them from the sidelines but can’t help but try to join them anyway. Solène doesn’t know what the term means properly, but she knows that they consider it to be an insult. She finds she likes it, though. Fury, anger, are they only appropriate when the men have them? Are they only important when Great Men die for a pipe dream? Let them be furies. Let them be angry, because who has earned the right better than the women who've sat by again and again while gutless men told them it would be fine? Who has the right better than those who starved time and time again, and watched their families do the same, while being told to _wait_ and not create a _fuss_? Why, if they’re so unimportant, are they silenced and shoved aside?

 

One of them pushes up against Solène as he attempts to get into the crowd, and she pushes him back hard, the man falling onto the ground.

 

They reach the Hôtel de Ville and begin to beat down the heavy doors. Men continue to try and succeed in filtering in, making their way into the crowd and, together, they succeed in taking down the doors. Solène, grudgingly, admits in the moment that they do have some use after all.

 

They take whatever they can from the building, papers flying through the air like snow as the crowd arms itself. Someone hands Solène a gun, the cold metal alien in her hand as she puts it down in disgust in favor of an axe. It’s enough to defend herself with.

 

A large man with thick matted hair, dressed all in black, who some of the women in the crowd recognize as one of the Bastille _vainqueurs_ , runs up to them. “My dear _citoyennes_ ,” he says, “There’s no need for this unpleasantness. Go back to your homes, I can take it from here. Whatever grievances you have will be addressed.”

 

“What can you men do?” Solène’s anger, the famous Mazurier temper, explodes. “You’ve had your chance, and what do we have?”

 

“NOTHING!” The crowd responds in a single, furious roar.

 

“You men don’t have the guts for action!”

 

He continues shouting, frantically moving throughout the crowd as they go throughout the building. “There’s nothing you can do, anyway. I’m sure if you send a deputation to the council-“

 

Had he sent a deputation to Peyrol when the royal troops were sniffing down their backs that July? Had he asked him if he would please, if it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience, of course, consider not murdering them all in the streets? Had Ronan’s old friend Desmoulins, when he mounted that cafe table in Palais Royale, told the people that, surely, if they asked politely, their needs would be seen to? No. They had all decided on direct action.

 

One of the other women shouts in reply, “The council? A bunch of traitors and aristocrats! To the lantern with them, Lafayette and Bailly first!”

 

He turns white at that, especially as more and more seem to agree with her, running off to receive his orders like the good dog he is. The Hôtel de Ville is theirs.

 

He is right about one thing, though: The Hôtel de Ville won’t be enough to get what they want, to see their children not starving in the streets. This began with the king, and it will have to end with him as well. So, on a day when not even mongrels wander out on the streets, they make the decision, together, to go to Versailles. Marie leaves, fearfully clutching the babe at her breast. Solène catches her eye and gives her a nod. She can look after the child; Solène has enough of a fight for two.

 

The man joins them again, begrudgingly, and some of the men who joined them at Hôtel de Ville continue, packing in alongside them as they all scramble to accommodate them. It becomes harder to find familiar faces as they all seem to blend and merge and scatter.

 

Solène fights off the disgust she feels.

 

She knows the look in their eyes too well. These are angry young men, men like Ronan. Too in love with the idea of violence, too closed off from life. They are barely restrained, looking for a fight anywhere they can rather than just when it is necessary, and there is a sense of danger with every step, every time she accidentally brushes against one of them and they snarl. But they know, all of them, that the men of the National Convention will never listen to a group of women. They’d laugh at them just as the men in Paris had laughed at them and they would have wasted the day for nothing they couldn’t have gotten less than ten feet out of their homes.

 

She doesn’t trust this man, him or the others, but just as his title of a Bastille _vainqueur_ makes her distrust him, it will make the men of the National Convention listen more than an hour of her shouting will ever do.

 

It is a long, slow trudge, walking through the mud as their dresses drag, mud squishing between the toes of even the women who have shoes. They have several canons with them, but it is treacherous to move them, pushing them foot by foot through the mud and the rain, but they will not be defenceless.

 

It is late in the afternoon when they reach Versailles, splitting into two separate groups. Most of the group go to the palace to wait for news, the second group, which she's attached to, goes to the National Convention, their dresses, now soaked through, dragging along the floor as they drop their weapons at the door, and many of them collapse onto the hard benches. They have had a long day’s work with little to keep them strong besides their own wills, and even as they stay there, it seems less and less likely that they’ll have anything to show for it by the end of the day, if the men have any say.

 

Speakers come up, ambitious men with flattering words and little action, men with fine educations and little knowledge. Ronan’s old friend from Arras is one of the few exceptions; there is something about him, an honesty, a certain compassion that makes them quiet to listen to him, and when he takes the stand, his thin frame seems to turn into a lightning conductor as he defends them and why they’ve come, and so they settle long enough for the man with the matted hair (Solène does not care for his name) to negotiate for them.

 

The discussions continue on, the man with the matted hair speaks confidently on behalf of the women he’s known for only a few hours, telling the assembly exactly what they want, within what he understands, at least. Which isn’t much, but it’s more than what they would’ve gotten if it’d been a woman representing them. She finds the delegate from Arras watching her closely. It’s not how men who want her services look, there’s nothing hungry or dark in it, just watching as he goes out among the women, talking to them, listening to their complaints, taking their hands nodding while saying something indistinct.

 

Some of the others aren’t so distant, such as the Vicomte de Mirabeau, who can be seen freely going around the room, trying to touch the breasts of some of the women. He comes to her, greedy fingers twitching, and soon finds himself on the floor. He quickly makes his apologies and scurries back to his seat while Solène smirks, the delegate from Arras, who had been watching him with clear disgust on his face, giving a small smile as well that he quickly buries behind his thumb and forefinger as the Vicomte passes him.

 

The delegate from Arras, Robespierre, she finally remembers his name is, approaches her at some point.

 

“Have we met before, _Citoyenne_? You seem familiar.”

 

“My brother was Ronan Mazurier.”

 

He grows quiet, his gaze turning downward as he nods to himself. “I’m sorry. He was a good friend as well as a good patriot. He gave his life for the _patrie_.” He tries to smile, spreading out his hands even as she can see the pain in his eyes, “We would still be dancing on the First Estate’s strings if it weren’t for the blood of men like him. I only hope we can live up to his promise.”

 

“If it’s all the same, I would rather have my brother than his promises.” She’d heard so many promises from her brother in life, they had stopped having any effect. In the end, he was a corpse the same as any other, and his promises burned out with him.

 

The smile freezes on his face, as his hands fold in on themselves, so different from the fire he showed on the stand. “You’re very like him, you know.”

 

She jolts at that. Of all the things people had said about them growing up, _that_ had never been one of them.

 

Her brother would come limping home with cuts and bruises; she had to stitch them up. He let himself be carried away by smooth talkers and high ideals; she’d had to focus on surviving. He lost his temper easily, but let it settle quickly; her temper was a slow-boiling pot of water that threatened to overflow when it became too much. If she’d been a boy, things might have been different, but she was the only woman in the household, and it didn’t matter if she was seven or seventeen.

 

The neighbor women tried to help, teaching her how to cook and clean and run the house while the men were in the fields, and that was when she’d learned to enjoy the company of her fellow women, crowded together in front of the fire the Mazuriers kept in the center of the house, smoke filling the air as they shared secrets and tips, what to put into a soup to fill her belly even when they had nothing, how to find the initials of the boy she would marry with an apple peel, and, later, when she was older, how to remove an unwanted child from her womb. There seemed to be so many things to remember, as a woman, and she’d done her best to remember, even as it all seemed too complicated.

 

Well, some things didn’t change, she thinks as she looks around at all the women crowded near her, exhausted, drenched, but _there_ , where the men would say they have no place.

 

Seeing her discomfort, he adds. "He always said exactly what he thought, and he always fought for what he believed in with all the courage of a lion.” Yes, and it’d killed him in the end. But that wasn’t convenient. Now that he was dead, her brother could be neatly placed in a little box and buried, and that was how people liked him best. The rest, she had to carry with her. Mademoiselle du Puget had really been the only one who’d understood that, when she thought of it. Perhaps that was what drew them to each other. They had seen Ronan, the good and the bad, and they’d still loved him. (Though when she thought of them walking down the Rue Saint-Denis together, hand in hand, or when she thought of Mademoiselle du Puget’s dark eyes looking into hers, that explanation seemed weak.)

 

“I'm not here for my brother, or his ideals. I'm here because otherwise the aristocrats will see us starve to death rather than give up their power. If your men of the National Assembly can fix that, good. If not, we’ll go somewhere else. I just want to be able to eat and live another day, as do they. The rest, I don’t care about.”

 

Robespierre smiles, showing white teeth, head dipping down slightly.

 

Solène crosses her arms across her chest. “What is it?”

 

“Oh, a reminder. Of something Ronan once said,” he sobers, he face relaxing again as he tucks a hand into the pocket of his black, patterned coat, “An argument.” _Of course it was an argument_ , she thinks, “I know that to you, I’m a lawyer with an education, with no understanding of suffering or sacrifice, but I promise you, I will do everything I can to see that your demands are met, _Citoyenne_ Mazurier.” He gives a firm nod to her, a slight, hopeful smile returning to his face, and that _does_ remind her of Ronan.

 

“I’ll believe it when I see it, _Citoyen_ Robespierre.”

 

Long after he’s moved to talking to someone else, head bent intently as he listens to her, the phrase _I’m nothing like my brother_ rolls through her head. She ignores the thin voice in her head that tells her that, if that was the case, why did she need to repeat it so often?

 

Everything goes well until it gets to the King himself. A group of the women, four or five, are chosen to meet with him, and Solène is one of them, a woman who’d been a stranger to her before they walked side by side together lifting her arm up as she nominates her for the position. These other four…they are respectable women, middle-class, with only a few tendrils of hair that have escaped their carefully pinned hats to indicate that they’ve gone through anything the last few hours, and when they look on her, she can feel their disdain. She raises her head as she accepts, looking each one of them in the eye and daring them to contradict her. No matter what they claim, they all starve together, they all walked here in the rain and the mud to be heard, and their limbs all ache the same.

 

She’s not sure about this, meeting with the King. She’s not sure what he’ll say or what he’ll be like, this man who’s always been more of an idea than a person, like a distant saint that could be appealed to for intercession, but not seen in the flesh.

 

But she has made it this far, farther than she ever imagined, her feet tired, sore, and calloused from the walk that really hasn’t ended since she left the village over a year ago (had it been a year? Only a year?)

 

And she will not be pushed aside and silenced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historically, the man who they seem to have based Peyrol at least PARTIALLY on, the Prince de Lambesc, was denounced later than Peyrol is here, on October 30th, was charged on November 30th, and tried and acquitted in 1790, though he'd emigrated shortly after the Bastille (having relied on his regiment to protect him from popular violence). Even after the Revolution, he never felt safe in France again, dying in Austria in 1827 at the age of 74.
> 
> Most of my take on the March at this point comes more or less from Stanislas Maillard's (the man with the matted hair's) account of it, with the line about Lafayette and Bailly going to the lantern being ripped directly from that. I'm probably a little mean to him here, given that, at the age of 25, he'd already established himself as a hero of the Revolution during the Bastille and would take an active part in the Revolution throughout the course of it until his death at the age of 30, but...given his part in lovely events such as the September Massacre, I don't think I've been *too* cruel. In his account, he portrays himself as the only sane men in a group of crazed (dare I say...hysterical?) women, with his absence in the later part of it giving way to bloodshed. 
> 
> The line about "Furies" comes straight from several of the most common contemporary portrayals of the women involved, including famed British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who would describe them as "having the appearance of Furies" and earlier said, feministically, "The concourse, at first, consisted mostly of market women, and the lowest refuse of the streets [Solène says 'Hi'], women who had thrown off the virtues of one sex without having power to assume more than the vices of the other." (In all fairness, she hates aristocratic women, too. "I believe in equal rights...for women who are like me," yes?) 
> 
> For Robespierre, I started off with the historical figure in mind, then I had Sebastién Agius, and now it's an odd mixture of Tamaki Ryou and Miura Ryosuke, with traces of Nozomi Fuuto's from A Passage Through the Light sneaking in every once in a while because I'm weak and I know it. Which is impressive given how little screentime Maxime really gets. Historically, he did apparently have a calming effect on the women (as dramatized in La Révolution Française,) though his exact words don't seem to be recorded. Apparently, he actually DID have good teeth for the time, or at least he tried to; he had a toothbrush in his possession. (Though I personally am of the stance that all those oranges had to have SOME affect on him.) Also, his sister Charlotte mentioned that he was always smiling, though I imagine that as the Revolution progressed, that became less frequent. 
> 
> On the reverse side, in the Hall of Shame, the Vicomte de Mirabeau being a lech comes straight from Adrien Duquesnoy's diary account of the event, where he added that, " the most indecent behavior occurred in the sacred shrine of the representatives of the world's leading nation." I leave the interpretation of that statement to you. Sadly, the Vicomte getting clocked in the face is not part of the historical record.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Women's March to Versailles, Pt. 2: The Breadening

The sun is setting as they enter the Palace of Versailles together, casting the building in shades of pale gold while the light glints off the windows as it would a rich woman’s diamond necklace. It’s like they’ve entered into a different world, one made of marble and gold and glass. The few aristocrats who have remained, clutching onto their necklaces and their canes, look at them fearfully as their muddied shoes join the hundreds and thousands of other footsteps that litter the floors, from men and women and dogs alike.

 

They’ve shown them they’re vulnerable, that even their fantasy world can be invaded by something as tedious as everyday life. And suddenly, the gods are mortal, the same as anyone else, and, more importantly, they’re outnumbered.

 

The king himself hides his fear well, greeting them with a smile that Solène knows is forced (after all, she’s worn it herself many times, when she’s tired or angry but she still needs to charm a man for the five seconds it takes for him to part with his coin), agreeable (too agreeable, she thinks, she knows not to trust a smiling face, especially not if a pike’s pointed at it at the time), kind, and _benevolent, generously_ agreeing to their demands.

 

“You ought to know my heart,” he says, and she believes she can even see a single, glistening tear in his eye. Compassion for them, or worry for himself and his family? “I am going to have all the bread in Versailles collected and given to you. The pain of the people is my pain.”

 

As they leave, she can hear the others going on about it, about their good fortune to have met such a _noble_ man. She pays no attention to it. He’s a man, the same as any other who’s paid her a sous or two for her time, but he’s a man with a pike to his throat. For a moment, Solène almost allows herself the luxury of hoping, if not in a world of peace and freedom, if not in a person, then in a day, in a step. In the king’s self-preservation instinct.

 

There’s a tall woman standing on top of one of the staircases, looking at them down her narrow, snubbed nose. Her grayed hair is only halfway dressed up, the rest tumbling along her back in loose curls, a wide brimmed, light blue hat angled off to the side. She wears a light gown tied with a sash, that looks, to Solène’s eyes, as if she’d decided one morning that, as an aristocrat, she had the right to wander around in her chemise. Which Solène wouldn’t mind, given that she’s never had an interest in being to a prude (wouldn’t be good for business, anyway), if it weren’t for the fact that this was the same type of woman who’d turn around and call her a whore in a second.

 

Not that she would use that term. It was too _beneath_ them to use it, even if they thought it. Far better to wipe away their existence with pretty terms, like, “undesirable” or “unfortunate.” Solène is reminded of Athenais and her large panniers sticking everywhere, looking at the contrast between them, finding she likes Athenais better. At least Athenais is the type of beast that signals that she's going to strike.

 

“I hope whatever you were paid was worth the cost to your immortal souls,” the woman says, her voice harsh and brittle as she shakes her head at them, “For violently abusing a sovereign who has always endeavoured for the happiness of his people. Even now, see how he treats you with all the magnanimity that is his nature, even as you’ve barged into where you have no right to enter. Brigands, ruffians every one of you. If I was in your place, I would weep of shame to show my face in the street.”

 

The others fall back as Solène steps forward. “You want to talk about souls? When you can look at people who’ve come here to beg because our stomachs are empty because your side steals grain from the people, and turn your nose up? I’m not worried about showing my face on the street; I’m worried about how you sleep at night.”

 

“All these false accusations, and there’s not a woman out there who doesn’t have a clean apron and white teeth. The Duc d’Orleans must pay you well.”

 

The Duc d-

 

It hits Solène then: She doesn’t think they have brains. It’s impossible for her to understand that they’re here because they choose to be. Their natural state is to be quiet and obedient and to do whatever the King tells them; anything else, and someone must have put the idea in their head, and she’ll grasp at anything to prove it. She’s probably never spoken to someone like her before in her life, except to give orders or charity, and the last one only from the position of being up high, pretending to be the gracious lady. She’s still up high, but Solène is meeting her eyes, black to pale blue, and she has no way of dealing with it.

 

She’d feel pity, if she could feel anything through the hunger and the pain.

 

“If it’s my teeth that bother you, I can always smear them with tea. God knows it works well enough for you. But until I hold the bread they promise for myself I won’t leave.”  

 

The other woman tries to stare her down, opening her mouth to no doubt say something else that she thinks will bring Solène to her knees, but she’s interrupted by the sounds of heels striking against marble.

 

“Madame de Tourzel, the children-” Olympe curtsies, and it’s the first time Solène’s seen her like this, in a closed environment, formal and dutiful even if her voice wavers with anxiety. It had been easy to forget, in the streets, that Olympe was one of them, that she spent most of her days here.     

 

Her eyes briefly meet Solène’s, and there’s a moment of recognition. She leans forward, and Solène wonders (or hopes?) that she’ll say something, but just as soon as that comes, it’s over, and she turns back towards Madame de Tourvel, lips closed in that now familiar, tight smile that is more a grimace than a smile now, ducking her head back down.

 

“My _duty_ awaits me,” Madame de Tourzel says, “Good evening.” She gives a single, rigid nod to Olympe, at which Olympe immediately rises from her curtsy, the two of them walking off, leaving the rest of them alone, in a hallway that seems to grow darker and darker by the second, without the moon or the stars to guide them, only the faint, flickering glow of candles and the glint of gold.

 

In the dead of night, the soldiers come in. She scans the front of the crowd, half expecting the blue coat that sometimes still haunts her nightmares, but she knows it’s pointless. Even in the darkness, where any man can be mistaken from another, she knows he’s not there. The last anyone has heard of him, he’d kept quiet after the trial, though sometimes rumors resurface, like a rotted fish in a lake. The Comte de Peyrol is emigrating to aid the Comtes d’Artois and Provence, the Comte de Peyrol has been called back to make a massacre among the people, the Comte de Peyrol has run back to his estate so that he can summon the Devil. Each time, it’s nothing. (Though she has her suspicions about the last one.)

 

Instead, it’s Lafayette himself, leading the National Guard, the so-called Army of the People.

 

Tension fills the air, as the soldiers do not retreat and do not fire. No one in the crowd knows what they will do, as all of their lives balance on a single twitch of a guardsman’s finger.

 

Sleep comes, uneasy and anxious. For many, it is a moment of peace and celebration. The guards have not fired, they claim to be there to support them, more people are on their side. After all, these are French troops, they will not fire easily on their own mothers and wives and sisters. But Solène doesn’t trust those uniforms, no matter whose side they claim to be on. Uniforms and bayonets have never mixed well for her, and she refuses to believe that Lafayette came to aid them over his king. No, these officers, they’re decent enough clients, when they’re not going to one of the expensive brothels, but they all have their own game.  

 

Instead, it feels as if Death’s come to Versailles, walking among them, raising the hair at the back of her neck as they all press near each other.

 

For the second time today, she thinks of her childhood, of her mother’s whispered stories about the Ankou. She told Solène, so many years ago, that he walks her family’s old home of Brittany, an old, skeletal man, inhumanly tall, seizing the young and the old alike in their homes, long scythe in hand, and tossing them onto his cart. His skin is bone white, thinly stretched along him, eyes hollow and black, stringy white hair hanging down the loose black cloak he wears, so that it seems like a shadow falls everywhere he walks. His head swivels around, side to side and front to back, her mother said, holding her one day as they sat together in front of the fire, so that no one is safe from his sight, rich and poor alike.

 

They all meet the Ankou in the end. The only ones spared are the last to die each year, who instead take the shadowy cloak of the Ankou for themselves, losing themselves to it until the end of the year when they can find their rest again.

 

Solène believes in what’s real, what she can touch for herself. She doesn’t have time for pipe dreams or fairy tales about lost princesses and cauldrons that are always full of food for the brave and good. No, but she believes in the Ankou. Her family had carried him with them when they’d left Brittany, in their way, and he’s haunted their steps ever since. And she can feel him here, in the crowd, among the soldiers, in the castle, at the gates, even as they try to reassure them that they mean no harm to them.

 

No, she gets no sleep tonight, her eyes locked on the bayonets as they gleam in the moonlight. She lays and waits and thinks.

 

Several hours later, a shot rings out in the dark. All the demons of Hell break loose, the only thought on Solène’s mind being that of another night, another volley of shots.

 

They mean to massacre them all.

 

The Queen has changed the King’s mind again and they will all be killed.

 

Every part of her knows it, screaming in her mind as they make their way for the Queen’s quarters, all else, all other thoughts disappearing.

 

A panicked voice asks them what they think they’re doing and another voice, she doesn’t know if it’s hers or one of the women with her, replies, _“We’ll cut off her head, rip out her heart, fry her liver, and that won’t be the end of it!”_

 

They are done with this, done with the queen, and they will take whatever they can get.

 

They have endured too much pain at this point to just curl up and die.

 

This wasn’t a fight they wanted to begin, but if it was a fight they needed to survive the night, they could give it to them.

 

They could give and give and give as they had always done, all of their lives.

 

A few guardsmen try to stop them, but they disappear beneath the wave of bodies flooding the palace. One of them breaks free, runs and pounds on the door, his bloodied hand staining the expensive, gilt wood as it slams against it before he’s tossed aside. “Save the Queen!”

 

A door slams ahead of them as they reach the room, the room itself is deserted, except for one woman who rushes in front of them all.

 

“I am the Queen!”

 

Solène recognizes the voice even before she can see her in the light of the torches, still wearing the clothing that she’d worn the night before, and she freezes.

 

 _Olympe_ . And suddenly, like water on a hot summer’s day, Solène’s anger disappears, replaced by a cool, sinking terror that twists her gut. _What is she doing here?_ They will kill her without a thought, many of them.

 

“Get out of the way!” One of them shouts, lowering a pike to her breast.

 

Olympe’s eyes dart between them all, at the weapons, at the door only a few seconds away if it weren’t for them blocking her, locking gazes with Solène briefly before saying, in a voice made of sheer steel. “I am the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne _._ Whatever business you have with her, you may take with me.” The words are slow, obviously to buy as much time for the Queen as she can manage.

 

They get closer, and Olympe backs away, floundering before straightening her back. “My ladies-My ladies have all deserted me. I am as you see me.”

 

“Tell us where she is, or I swear, you’ll be flayed and fed to the gutter rats!”

 

If she hesitated once before out of fear of her own life, there is none of it now as she looks at them all, the torchlight giving her eyes the appearance of two small, hard stones, “That may be so, but nonetheless I cannot tell you.”

 

They won’t wait forever, Solène knows, and Olympe is just an aristocratic girl who’s standing between them and what they need. Just one more casualty. She sees one of them, the one that had lowered the pike, making to lunge, and she throws herself against Olympe, who looks at her in startled recognition. There is only one thought in her mind, desperate, ringing out again and again like a church bell in the last hour of the world: _Not her not her not her not her not her._

 

“Leave her! She’s a friend, she’s a friend!”

 

“She’s here, isn’t she? She’s an aristocrat just like them, conspiring with the Queen so that the Austrian Bitch can save her own skin!”

 

Another, “Let them all die, for what I care. What do we owe them? Kill the little bitch!”

 

One of them tries to pull her away to get closer, but Solène holds fast, kicking hard to keep them away.

 

“Whose side are you on, anyway?”

 

Solène stares them in the eye, each one of them. “Not. Her. You will have to kill me first, you understand? Leave her.” She’ll die, she thinks in that moment. She knows she will, and she thinks of Ronan running in front of the bullets. Had he known then? Had he always known what he was racing towards? It had been painful, she remembers, and longer than it had any right to be. Would it be the same here? Would they leave her to bleed out on the marble? Would there be enough of her left to bleed out? “Leave her!” In her desperation, she shouts.

 

Then she feels Olympe’s grip tighten on her, and briefly breaks her glare to look at her. She is defiant, even as Solène can see the way her eyes widen and the quick rise and fall of her breaths, and Solène knows that she’ll give her life for her. It might not be much, but she’ll kick and bite and _claw_ as much as she can until it’s over. They will not kill her. Solène might die, but she will not live through this again. Never again.

 

One of them looks ready to attack again, this time aiming for Solène, and she has a few seconds to accept that this is how she’s going to die, exhausted, starving, at the hands of women who were her comrades minutes before while trying to defend an aristocrat who could never return whatever feelings she has for her because of a lingering attachment to her idiot brother. (For once in her life, she hopes Heaven _doesn’t_ exist, because she can already hear whatever comment Ronan would have on hand and she’d rather have endless night than _that_.)                            

 

The woman stops suddenly, face frozen, sabre half-raised, suspended in the air, looking at them as if she’s seen a ghost. ( _Ankou, Ankou, Ankou_ , her mind says, wondering if she’ll see her childhood nightmares brought to life.) As she follows the woman’s line of sight, though, she sees that it isn’t a spectre, but Olympe, raising a pistol to them, the torchlight showing the glint of the trigger as her finger moves to it.

 

“Leave us,” she says, tone icy even if there’s a trace of fear lurking underneath it, and it’s the first time that Soléne truly sees the steel that she’s always known lurked beneath the surface fully unsheathed, and she looks like a storm trapped in the form of a woman, awesome and terrifying and beautiful and _radiant_. (Not the time, she tells herself.)

 

They look at her, look at Olympe, wondering what to do. She can see them weighing it over in their minds, whether it will be worth it to kill them there or to pursue the Queen somewhere else, and tension fills the air as two lives, as millions of lives hang in the balance of a few moments.

 

Then, they decide to go for the greater prize, picking up their feet to search for the Queen elsewhere, stabbing the mattress several times for good measure. Solène doesn’t care, all her energy on the woman who holds her tight, their heads nestled together as they both collapse onto the floor of the Queen’s apartment, the gun, unloaded and harmless, clattering to the floor beneath them as white feathers float in the air above them like snow from where the others had pierced the Queen’s mattress.

 

They do not part until the soldiers come in, ushering them out and back into the yard.

 

With the morning comes peace, as the King agrees to accompany them back to Paris. She has exactly what she wanted. The King is theirs now. Finally, they were listened to, but there is a hollowness to it. Olympe is pressed up against her side, and even as she keeps her face passive, Solène can feel her trembling, as all the fear that she’d felt the night before but couldn’t express is finally allowed to rise to the surface. On and on the thought presses through her mind that _They could have killed her_ and, even as she looks at the throng of women triumphant as king and people are reunited, there is a sense of dread that haunts her, and it is only compounded as she sees the heads of the two guards killed in the night.

 

Death, death, death, everywhere, all the time, even when they just want to live and feed their families in peace. The Ankou never lets them go for a second.

 

And she had participated in it, until she saw Olympe there. What would she have done if it had been anyone else? If it had been the Queen?

 

_We’ll cut off her head, rip out her heart, fry her liver, and that won’t be the end of it!_

 

Perhaps, in the end, even while they had different goals, she is not as different from her brother as she thought, and she feels a chill go through her spine.

 

The Queen, she hears, handled herself well. She went onto the balcony herself, perhaps tired of watching as other people put themselves onto the pike for her, and Lafayette, ever the good officer, kissed her hand. Solène doesn’t have any trust in her body left for officers or queens, but she can appreciate the courage it took to walk out before a crowd that wanted her dead. More courage than she’d seen from any man there, at least.

 

She hears the triumphant cries ahead of the steady procession.

 

“We’re not likely to starve again! We’ve got the baker, the baker’s wife, and the baker’s boy!” That is the common phrase from their mouths, while multitudes of women and men carry loaves of bread around, singing and rejoicing.

 

It's a perfect success. They’ve achieved everything they’d set out to do and more besides, but Solène can only follow Olympe’s vision to the heads on the pikes, members of the King’s Body Guard who hadn’t been so fortunate the night before, trailing behind the carriage that rumbles down the streets like a butcher’s cart. In the window, she sees two children pressed tightly together, straining to see more before they’re held back by the aristocratic woman who’d confronted them on the steps just the night before. Then, she had been the great lady, but there is little of that now as she holds them back, even as she frowns imperiously. Instead, there are deep shadows that linger beneath her eyes, and it seems as if she has gained twenty years.

 

Solène quickly grabs a loaf, splitting off from the celebrations along with Olympe, navigating her way through the streets to her apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Personally, you'll pry the Mazuriers having some connection to Brittany from my cold, dead hands. I mean...RONAN. As a name. And a dozen other reasons. But, the Toho and Takarazuka productions made a decision to drop them in the Beauce, so I'm going to pretend to respect that decision even as I find ways to circumvent it. Also, a word of advice: Looking up the Ankou late at night is a VERY bad idea. Do not do that thing. 
> 
> As far as my primary sources are concerned, I'd love to give a shout out to Madame de Campan and Madame de Tourzel, who provided a solid royalist account of what went down in-between blaming the Duc d'Orleans. Most of Madame de Tourzel's lines come more or less from her Memoirs, either directly or paraphrased, including the line about the women's teeth (she was also pissed off over the clean aprons). Historically, it looks like she never met the women for herself, she probably had other things to worry about when they came to Versailles, but it gave me a chance for a conservative Royalist point of view. (For whatever it's worth, while historians have debated the validity of the Orleans Conspiracy as a cause for the March, Grace Dalrymple Elliot, the Duc's mistress, helpfully supplies in her memoirs that the Duc was with her at the time. )
> 
> Louis' line is taken directly from the account of his servant, Jean-Baptise-Pierre Prieur, from when he met with the women. 
> 
> And, finally, when the women reached the room, it was completely deserted, Marie Antoinette only barely having escaped with her life. But (1) I needed Solène and Olympe to meet and (2) I couldn't imagine Olympe NOT being willing to buy time, and I needed more of the hard edge to Olympe that we see in the Takarazuka and Toho productions. It's based very, very, very slightly on the later attack on the Tuileries in 1792, when Madame Elisabeth, the queen's staunchly loyal, staunchly conservative sister in law expressed a wish that the crowd would mistake her for Marie Antoinette, hoping to save her sister in law's life. 
> 
> Madame de Tourzel claims that the incident with them stabbing the mattress is accurate, Madame de Campan refutes it, I lean towards Madame de Campan on this one, personally, but the image is so striking that I couldn't NOT include it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tfw you meet up with your crush but then the squad you're with tries to kill her so you have to take her to your place where you can talk it out.

“Thank you, Mademoiselle Mazurier,” Olympe says, keeping her eyes trained down as she sits on Solène’s thin straw mattress. “If not for you—“

 

“You seem to be fairly capable yourself, you know,” Solène says, remembering the hard look in her eyes when she’d faced off against the crowd. Hesitantly, she offers up the half-eaten loaf to Olympe, “Do you-?”

 

Olympe shakes her head, forcing a faint smile on her face. “No. No thank you, I have no stomach for it.”

 

Olympe looks out of place in Solène’s cramped apartment room, the light green dress she wears the only color amidst the grays and the browns of the cool brick and plaster that covers all four falls of her apartment, with no paint or panelling to show it for anything other than it is. Solène considered herself lucky to scrape together enough to get a room for one, still does, really, even if it’s at the highest floor of the apartment building and she has to climb up a stairwell that smelled like a sewer to get up there.

 

Solène breaks the silence. “You can shoot?”

 

“I’m a soldier’s daughter,” she says, crossing her arms, and there’s touch of warmth and pride underneath despite how rattled she still is, “He was right.”

 

Despite her stomach still protesting, even as she’s gorged herself, Solène finds that she has little appetite, putting the bread aside. “I’m sorry, Mademoiselle du Puget. I hadn’t meant for it to affect you. I--” she swallows, “I wasn’t thinking of anything except my own anger.”

 

“I could never sit by while the Royal Family is put in danger,” Olympe says, “Whatever affects them affects me.” Solène remembers her words, so long ago it seems. _I try to help those who are kind to me, that is all_. And what had she gained for it? Had they so much as asked about her after she’d put her life on the line for them, or had they sighed and decided that her life was an acceptable loss?

 

“What did they do for you?” Olympe looks at her strangely, so she adds, “To make you loyal enough to put yourself in front of the pike for them?”   
  
“They gave me their trust, when I was just a newly presented jailor’s daughter. They gave me my own rooms, an occupation with a steady income, their favor, their intimacy, all of it before I was the age of twenty.”

 

It’s the last, the _intimacy_ , that causes jealousy to prick at Solène. “And they let you take the bullet for them.”

 

Immediately, she regrets it. She’d thought it, sure, but she wasn’t going to _say_ it. Ronan was more the “Talk first, pay for it later” one in their family, at least when it came to people that Solène _wanted_ to like her, and this is just one more confirmation that she has more of her brother in her than she’s ever wanted to acknowledge, the good and the bad. But it’s out now, and...it _is_ true.        

 

“I _chose_ to do that.” Solène finds herself shaken to the bone by how _fierce_ her tone is when she’s saying it before she calms herself, “I hope you think better of me than to believe that I have no thoughts of my own.”

 

“I just saw you point a gun at a crowd that wanted us dead. Only an idiot would think that.” But there were other things that went into a choice. People could be manipulated or led on. People could lie and decieve. People could promise friendship and a roof under her head, tossing out crumbs and expecting a feast in return.

 

“Your brother did.” Soléne’s surprised by the anger that Olympe can fit into three words, and she can see a hundred half-reconstructed arguments, because she knows her brother would never leave it alone.

 

“That proves the point.”  

 

And, for a moment, against her own will, she can see Olympe fighting off a smile before she sobers. “He had one of the best hearts I have ever known, but there were times that he would get so angry at the Royal Family.” She closes her eyes, swallowing as she fights the memory. “So full of hatred, I could barely say a word to him. And nothing I could say--”

 

Solène reaches out a hand on impulse, only for Olympe to flinch away, looking guiltily at her immediately afterwards.  

 

Olympe steadies herself. “Nothing could convince him. And then it would pass, the next time I saw him.” She crosses her hands across her shoulder, as if she’s feeling something pushing at her. “When I saw you there, I thought…”

 

She’d thought that she was seeing the past repeat itself. This time, the words stick in her throat when she tries to say, _“I’m not my brother.”_ It doesn’t matter what she has in common with her brother or not, what matters is what Olympe’s _seen_.

 

Instead, she chooses another route. “When the Comte de Peyrol killed our father, Ronan left me, scrambling from one smooth talker to the next, while I tried to put together enough money to feed myself once a day.” At Olympe’s pitying glance, she attempts to shrug as she looks down. She doesn’t want her _pity_ , she doesn’t want to be a charity case. She wants-

 

What she can’t have. (Her brother had castles in the air, she has grand romances that collapse to dust at a touch.)

 

She continues, “When we met again, it was months later, and we were strangers. And that was that. We both lost him to the Revolution, in the end.”  She looks at Olympe then, daring to meet her eye to eye. “I would never do the same. I know where my priorities lie.”

 

She kicks herself for it after. She’s met Olympe du Puget three times, now, and she’s already gotten _attached_ to her, even if she knows it’s going to end in tears.  

 

“If I hadn’t been there, what would you have done?”

 

Solène looks at her then, at those dark eyes piercing hers, probing, liquid amber in the light that filters through the small window that stands at the other end of the room, looking down at the street. “I don’t know.”

 

“Is that all that you can say?”

 

“It’s the truth. If you want someone to lie to you, Paris is full of them. But me? No. I might have stopped, I might not have. I’m not a saint. I don’t want to be a murderer, either, but I won’t pretend to know what I _might_ have done. It never happened, so there’s no way of knowing. Either way, it’s done now, I made my decision, and the rest is smoke. Would you have done any different with your gun? Do you know?”

 

She tries not to dwell on “might have been”s. If she spent all her time thinking about what could have been, she’d never move on with things. _If_ their crops hadn’t failed, _if_ Ronan hadn’t rushed in front of the Comte de Peyrol when he came to arrest their father, _if_ Peyrol hadn’t given the order to fire, _if_ Ronan hadn’t decided to go to Paris, _if_ she hadn’t chosen to follow after him, _if_ they’d found a pot of gold buried at the foot of an old tree, _if_ Ronan hadn’t been at the Bastille--

 

They’d happened. She’d survived, life went on.

 

Olympe shakes her head, watching as a rat scrambles across the floor, “I never wanted to hurt anyone.”

 

“Neither did I,” her voice is weaker, more tired than she wants as she shrugs, trying to get the blurred images from her mind, her survival instinct causing her to move away from it as she focuses on the brick walls that surround them. “I suppose you won’t want anything to do with me now that I’m _inconvenient_.”

 

_The aristocracy doesn’t care for any but their own, at heart, and the amusements of a moment or two._

 

Olympe shakes her head, and then there’s that tight smile of hers again. “You saved my life. That is surely convenient enough for me.” Still, there’s a distance between the two of them that they didn’t even have when they were strangers, and she can hear the hesitation in Olympe’s voice. She wonders if they’ve lost something, then, something that they’d never had the chance to have, though she reminds herself that there was never anything there, that she was _Ronan’s_ fiancée, that…

 

She has no time to consider it before Olympe’s arms are around her again, not out of fear as it’d been out of Versailles, not out of desperation, but out of comfort, fingers wrapping around where they had earlier gripped, and for the first time Solène can allow herself to relax into it, losing the tension of the past days, taking it in, how soft the skin of her neck is as she presses it to Solène’s shoulder, the perfume that fills her nose as she leans into the touch, not heavy like the stuff that Athenais marinates herself in, but a light Jasmine that floats off of her, even as she feels some guilt for the longing that pierces through her because she knows that Olympe might be able to forgive her so much, but she can never give her that, and even if she could…

 

There are some boundaries that aren’t crossed, and even though she doesn’t have any of Ronan’s strange touchiness over, say, sleeping with a sibling’s friend (if the money’s good, it’s good), there’s something _wrong_ about wanting someone who her brother would have been _married_ to had things gone differently. As if...she would be dancing on his grave.

 

And it’s too close, still. Even as it grows distant, it lingers, coming back at the worst times to remind her that, yes, she’s an orphan with no family now. She tries to swallow it and contain it, moving on, but it can never fully die, though at least she hasn’t cried since the funeral. If she can keep it buried, not think about it except for times likes this when it’s impossible and move on with things, she’ll get by, like she always has, but it’s still too close for any kind of comfort.

 

And Olympe is still no doubt in mourning herself, and Solène knows that she’s not always the best person, but she’s not going to be the person who takes advantage of someone’s grief for her own pleasure. Her sense of herself and who she is might be shaken by the events of the last day, but she knows that that is _not_ who she is.

 

So she enjoys the touch, the comfort, the fact that, despite everything, they’re _there_ , and they’ve not destroyed the friendship they’d had.

 

“Mademoiselle Mazurier,” Olympe says as they part, breaking the embrace but keeping the closeness, their noses almost brushing. “There is-”

 

The door flies open and the moment’s gone.

 

Marguerite stands at the end of the room. All things told, she reminds Solène of a rabbit that’s just been chased by a fox, all tussled hair and frantic breaths. “Solène, I just heard--”       

 

“Olympe!” Charlotte bounces in, and then Olympe gives a smile, a real smile, as she hugs the girl. “So, you finally flew the coop, hm?”    
  
“Charlotte!” The sound comes from both Olympe and Solène at the same time, their voices mixing.

 

“What?” Charlotte wedges herself between them on the bed, legs dangling off the side as she gleefully snatches ahold of the leftover bread.

 

Olympe sighs and pets her hair in response.

  
“We had a few problems leaving Versailles,” Solène says, putting both of her hands in her lap like she’s a young child getting caught stealing an apple from the local orchard.

 

“A few problems? The way the city’s talking, you’d think a group of devils just crawled out of Hell to hand-deliver the royal family to Paris, and then Marie came up to me, squawling baby in hand, to tell me that you were part of it.”

 

Olympe darts up. “Is the Royal Family safe?”

 

“As far as I know, at least. Nothing more’s happened since they arrived. Everything looks like it’s quieted down.”

 

Olympe clasps her hands together in response, raising them to her face in thanks.

 

Then Marguerite smirks, looking between the two of them, and Solène knows that she’s dead. She glares at Marguerite, putting her hand against her throat horizontally and then making a back and forth cutting motion, hoping Olympe won’t see. The last thing she needs is for Olympe to hear--

 

“So, this is the aristo girl you were telling us about. And just as as you said, too.”

 

Maybe, if there is some sort of greater force, fate, destiny, God, she doesn’t really care about that sort of thing, it’s fated that she’d end up murdering someone that day. Because otherwise she doesn’t understand how so many things could be working together to make her do it.

 

Olympe’s eyes seem to regain some of their warmth as she glances over at Solène, giving a small, tight smile as she looks at the floor, and Solène wants to crawl under the thin, moth-eaten blanket that covers her bed.

 

It’s times like this when she wonders whether the family legends about some ancient Mazurier offending a witch are true after all. (Not that she believes in witches, they’re stories made up by men scared of feasting on the fruit of their own actions or of dealing with the uncertainties of life, but it would explain things.)

 

“A princess!” Charlotte chimes in.

 

It’s the way things go: Escape death at Versailles one day, die of embarrassment in your own apartment the next.

 

“I didn’t know I had such a reputation,” Olympe says, her usual quiet, smooth voice giving nothing away. She must be embarrassed, unless she’s used to it, which would make sense, though...women are allowed to find each other beautiful. There doesn’t need to be any other meaning to it. She’s overthinking it. Starting to sound like Ronan, when she _knows_ she’s better than this. After all, who had to finish the fights he always started when they were children?

 

If she just settles down and looks at the situation, it’ll be fine. After all, she’s survived worse than this.

 

Though she’s _still_ going to strangle Marguerite with her bare hands when this is done. Just...not in front of Olympe and the child.

 

“You don’t--” Solène says.

 

“Only to those of us who’ve heard old Solène here talk about you. Marguerite le Blanc, by the way.” She reaches out a hand.

 

After a moment of hesitation, Olympe takes it gingerly, “Olympe du Puget.”

 

“Pleasure,” Marguerite says. “Well, Solène, now that we’ve got that out of the way, I hope you’re not going to leave me in suspense. You’ve got an eager audience waiting to hear about your adventures.”

 

“There isn’t much to tell. I went to ask for bread, things took a bad turn, and I ran into Mademoiselle du Puget on the way.”   


“And you saved my life,” Olympe said, “Unless that isn’t worthy of your report, of course?”   


“No kidding?” Charlotte said.

 

“Not that you needed it,” Solène added, as if by reflex, “You were doing a good enough job of that on your own.”

 

At Marguerite’s questioning look, Solène added, “When I met her, there were others with me who thought that a pint of aristocratic blood spilt was worth it, no matter who it came from. I didn’t see the point in it, so I chose to take her side. And then Mademoiselle du Puget drew out a gun and it wasn’t important anymore.”  

 

Marguerite shakes her head in a heavy, exaggerated motion. “ _One day_ , Mazurier. I left you alone for _one day_.”

 

“I did meet the Royal Governess, Madame de Tourzel, I think. She had no liking for me.” Solène leans backward dramatically, throwing her hand across her heart as she catches Olympe’s eye to see her smiling, which only spurs her on further, “My dreams of being invited to a salon are _ruined_ ! My hopes are _dashed_! I might never even make a respectable match. Whatever will my poor family say? I’ll have to be sent away to a convent, locked away from the world!”

 

Then, sobering, she adds, “The King was kinder, at least.”

 

Marguerite gives out a strangled wheeze that sounds vaguely like a dying cat’s yowls mixed with Solène’s name.

 

She turns to Marguerite and shrugs. “What? It was only a few minutes.”

 

“A few-A few…”

 

Olympe gives a smile that is almost conspiratorial, making Solène’s stomach flop. “You never heard her afterwards. For three hours afterwards, at least. In the short time I’ve known her, I can say I’ve never seen Madame Severe so angry.”

 

“Madame Severe?” Solène finds herself smirking as she remembers the woman standing tall and imposing on the staircase of Versailles, holding herself up like an old rooster. The name suits her.

 

Olympe dips her head, and this time it’s her turn to look like she’s been caught in the act, “A nickname the children use for her. After several months, I can say that it is not unfair.”  

 

“Careful, that almost sounds like a _criticism_ . You might be exiled.”   
  
“I did tell you once that I have my own thoughts. I didn’t lose them when I accepted my position there. And just because we both love the Royal Family, that doesn’t mean _she_ has my trust. I do what she orders me to do in caring for the children, nothing more. And for the rest, I take the victories I can.”

 

Marguerite looks from Solène to Olympe again, this time more resigned than curious as she gives a long, drawn out sigh that reminds Solène of their father when Ronan had found some new way of getting into trouble (Which was at least five times a week, sometimes twice in one day.) “You two deserve each other.”

 

"Told you!" Charlotte says, though it’s muffled from the bread that she’s still stuffing into her mouth.   

 

“How’d you start running with Mazurier’s brother, anyway? Or do I even want to know?”   
  
“Ronan?” Charlotte asks, sobering, looking between them like they’ve just told her that the sky’s actually a beautiful shade of pink. Strange, she’d have thought that Charlotte would know more about that. It seems like the child knows everything, for better or worse. (Definitely worse.)

 

“It is something of a long story,” Olympe says, making a great study of her clasped hands and offering no more than that.                       

 

"Well, at least the two of you are safe, that's the important part, I suppose. These are odd times we're living in."                                      

 

"The time...the time!" Olympe rushes to the small window of Solène's room, lightly brushing aside the thin, fragile fabric that she uses as a curtain, only to be met with black pierced with the amber glow of the street lamps that line the city streets. She starts to pace around the room, every inch of her in deep, frantic agitation, gown dragging along dust and dirt and wine stains that’ve probably been embedded in the floor longer than Solène’s been alive. “My father--He will be so worried. I have to go, I am-so, so sorry.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

 

Solène has no idea how it is even so late. It seems like only an hour or so ago that they’d been rushing through the back-alleys of France together, side by side. Had they really spent all that time together talking?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

 

“With the streets how they are right now?” Marguerite asks. “Do you want to die after all?”

 

“I saw very little violence on the way back, the worst should be over.”

 

“Solène…” Marguerite sighs, “Talk to her. You and I both know that it can turn on an instant. And when a crowd is that happy over something, they want to celebrate, and when they celebrate, they get pissed, and when they get pissed…”

 

Charlotte throws her hands up in the air, “Danton appears!”

 

Well, it isn’t like she’s wrong. A few times she’d been able to get work just by knowing where the wine was flowing and letting it lead her to Danton, who was generally reliable for a few sous, at least, like a lonely traveller walking along a river until they came to the nearest town or village. Not what Marguerite’s edging at, but not _wrong_.

 

And...Solène thinks, at least that much of Charlotte’s innocence remains intact. God knows what she’s seen on the streets after all this time, but at least she has some innocence left.

 

For however long that’ll last.

 

Olympe looks at Solène, who looks down, hating the point Marguerite’s making but finding herself agreeing with it. “It’s true.”

 

“See?” Marguerite lays a heavy hand on her shoulder, “The troublemaker agrees with me.”

 

“Troublemaker?” Solène glares at her. She is _not_ the troublemaker. Things just _happen_ and then she has to deal with them. Sometimes with an axe. (Before, “things” meant “Ronan” but now the world seems to be set on creating turmoil on its own without him as its agent of chaos.)

 

Marguerite raises a hand, “Wait until they’re all hair-ached in the morning; they’ll have more to deal with then. Give me your address, I can find your father to tell him you’re safe.”

 

“I know it!” Charlotte said.

 

Olympe looked from Marguerite to Solène to Charlotte and then back to the floor, playing with her hands, the small diamond ring that she wore on her finger moving up and down, up and down. “I don’t want to be an imposition.”

 

“You wouldn’t be--” Solène says, too quickly, and immediately regrets it as Marguerite gets a very knowing look that says _Of course you don’t_ without needing to say it while Charlotte props her chin on her hand, sighing wistfully. “It isn’t like I’m going to have any company tonight.” It’s the best she can do to salvage it while her cheeks are burning, hoping that either Olympe or Marguerite won't see it as she tries to focus on a crack in the ceiling that looks like a lightning bolt that splits down across the dull plaster. “I would hate to save your life one day and then find you dead on the street the next.”

 

Marguerite groans, dragging her hand along her face.

 

“Then I...accept,” Olympe says slowly, brows knitting in confusion as she watches Marguerite. She’s never going to want to be around her again, Solène thinks. Marguerite and Charlotte’s alliance will have managed to terrify her away.

"Glad you've seen reason," Marguerite says. "Well, I'm going to be off to see your father, then, tell him the good news that you're alive.” As she’s about ready to walk out the door she turns, as if suddenly remembering something, ”Please don't burn the Hotel de Ville while you're alone. Charlotte?"

 

"Do I have to?" She asks, almost dragging her hands along the floor.

 

Olympe bends down so that she's eye level with the girl. "When things settle down, I will make sure you and Françoise can have some more time together. Would that make it better?"

 

Charlotte nods.

 

Olympe smiles at her affectionately, though Solène notices a certain sadness there, hand brushing against Charlotte’s cheek. "Good. Then I hope I'll see you soon."

 

Charlotte hugs Olympe then, though it's more a tug than a hug proper, sudden and jerky and foreign to everything Solène had known about her before, burying her face in Olympe's shoulder. Olympe relaxes into it, smoothing out the hair on her on the head before the girl pulls away almost as quickly as she'd started it, as if the entire thing had been a trick of the light.

 

"Sure thing! I won't let you down!"

 

After they leave, Olympe shakes her head, more to herself than Solène. “She tries so hard not to show that she cares. I only hope that one day, she learns that not everyone who cares for her will abandon her.”

 

“Not likely, given where she’s currently at.” Then, at the look on Olympe’s face, she softens, “I’m sorry for Marguerite, by the way. I know that she can be...a little demanding if you’re unused to her.” _And if you are_ , she thinks, “If you want to go home, I can take you. To me, the moonlight’s a better guide than ten suns; no one would bother us.” After all this time, she knows the city better in silver than gold, knows where they're most in danger, where they're least in danger, the back-alleys and streets no one would think of.

 

If it was her in the same position, forced to stay in one place by people who think they know her better, she can only imagine how furious she’d be, and she doesn’t want that for Olympe. If there’s one thing she’s learned, it’s that as much as she wants Olympe with her, as much as she enjoys her presence, her company, the few touches they exchange, she never wants Olympe to feel trapped with her.

 

If she’s going to be there, even if things between them only stay as a friendship, then she wants it to be because she _chose_ to be with her.

 

“No,” Olympe says. “I agree. If my family knows I’m safe, then it’s surely better to stay that way. Unless…” She draws her hands across her waist, looking down at the floor, and Solène tries not to follow her hands to the ruffles that trimmed the upper skirt of the gown. There was no way _that_ line of thinking would do her any good.

 

“No! No, I’m-I’m happy to have you,” Solène panics, realizing that she had overshot her target. Only slightly better than Olympe feeling like she’s being imprisoned: Olympe feeling like Solène is trying to push her out the door.

 

Olympe looks ready to say something, and Solène wonders if it has anything to do with what she was about to tell her before, but then her lips tighten, and it’s lost. It’s the thing, with her, Solène guesses: There’s what she says, and then there’s a hundred things laying under the surface, and trying to find those is like looking at the bottom of the Seine on a cloudy, dark day. But, she supposes, that’s what comes with being friends (she muffles the voice in her head before it can betray her by adding _and more_ ) with an aristocrat.

 

There’s them, then there’s their breeding. The men who lifted up her skirts every night don’t care about their breeding, because she’s a nameless face to them. They use her for a service, they leave, and if she’s lucky and they don’t try to be clever, she has several more coins in her pockets to show for it. But to Olympe, she’s Someone, and so everything’s mist. It would almost be a compliment, if it wasn’t frustrating as much as it could be charming.

 

Odd thing, that. The ones who know them best know them least. No wonder they had so many problems.

 

She does wish that Olympe would come out with it, though. What does she think she’s going to do, shun her? Mock her?

 

Then, Olympe lowers her head again. “How am I going to sleep?”

 

“It’s the same as any other place, on a be-” Before Solène can finish, she understands what Olympe is saying, looking at the huge amount of fabric that hangs off of her. It’s the kind of dress she’s never worn before, never even really thought of wearing because it would be too inconvenient, unless she somehow snagged a comte or marquis for herself (and even then, she’s never really pictured herself as a kept woman, playing the harpsichord and singing while men gather around to applaud her in a room the size of her old home. After all, the second the fop tired of her, where would she be then? Alone? Again?) That type of dress is made to have someone else help her in and out of; it isn’t designed to be handled by one person.

 

“I can handle the gown and the stomacher, however,” she grimaces as she jerks her head sideways, to her back, where there seems to be an unbroken length of green fabric that leads down to the rest of the back, and Solène doesn’t entirely understand she means except for-- _oh_ , _the pair of bodies_. “I believe I might need some help elsewhere, if you are willing to--”

 

“I...think...I can do that.”

 

Of all the ways this day has gone, somehow _undressing Olympe du Puget_ is the one that she can’t begin to put her head around. Normally, she’d laugh at how men lose their minds (and their money) at so much of a scrap of fabric raised in the right way, but at the moment, her mind’s scrambled in a hundred different directions, and she isn’t sure if there’s nothing there are if there are a thousand thoughts going through it once because, no matter what, there isn’t a single coherent thought in the mix.

 

Thank God Marguerite’s gone. She’d have never heard the end of it. She can storm Versailles, she can stop any fight with a glare or a shove in the right direction, she can put a dupe in his place if he tries to take his liberties, but she can’t deal with a scrap of fabric. (She doesn’t think about if Ronan was there, telling her to get on with it. She doesn’t want to think of him, especially not now, when she’s like this. Especially not now, when she’s like this, _with Olympe_. So she doesn’t.)

 

Olympe begins to unpin the dress from the stomacher, slender fingers clasping at pins smoothly, systematically, moving each one of them off in perfect order, and it’s easy to become lost in the simple, easy repetition of the quick movements. Then Solène realizes that, given everything else, that is actually a very, very bad idea and nearly trips over herself trying to get behind Olympe.

 

“Are you hurt?” Olympe asks.

 

Only her basic pride, dignity, and sense of self-respect. But other than that, fine. They’d been hurt enough today, anyway. They were getting used to it.

 

How did people even _do_ this? Live with this kind of thing day in, day out and not explode?  

 

She was _never_ going to laugh at someone going through the pangs of infatuation again. She’s learned her lesson. 

 

“I’m fine.” She replies, and she’s happy that she can at least speak French still, instead of going straight to gibberish like her mind seems to want.

 

“Are you sure?”   
  
“Absolutely!” She scrambles to get behind Olympe, already dreading what’s to come. If she can’t go _this_ far without nearly killing herself, how is she going to do later? But she also can hardly ask her to do anything differently, because that would be suspicious.

 

She’s survived this much. She can survive the sight of Olympe du Puget down to her shift. In her room. With the two of them alone. She’s a woman of the world, she’s not supposed to be bothered by any of this anyway. It’s all the same. It’s….one more almost naked body. That is not paying her to also be almost or completely naked. So, really, that makes it easier.

 

She isn’t the farm girl anymore, she’s long since learned how to own the night with the ease of a queen ruling her court. And with better results.

 

So, she does what she does best, turning her face into a mask as she looks over the line of crossed strings that run down Olympe’s back like a second spine. She’s done this thousands of times every day from the time she was a small girl, just...from the front instead of the back, and it’s always been a simple part of her morning routine, the same as helping in the fields or cleaning the house, but it’s _different_ helping someone else do it, seeing them spread out like this.

 

Olympe breathes in sharply as Solène’s fingers brush against the string, her back shifting against her touch, and Solène freezes, trying to block out all the images that _that_ gives her and the heat that pools in her stomach (so different from what she feels when she’s working, unexpected, uncalled for. Sometimes, she enjoys her job, depending on the customer and the circumstances, but at the end of her day, when she falls into her bed as dawn breaks, alone, it’s still a _job_ .) This is _normal_ , she can do this. There’s no problem. No problem at all.

 

String loosens and unravels around her fingers as she draws it out of the small holes that line the edges of the linen and baleen, the pair of bodies gradually becoming undone with each pull and tug of her fingers, the narrow gap of Olympe’s shift that’s visible beneath the bodies widening more and more. Finally, the pair of bodies join the rest on the floor and it’s just the shift and the bare skin of Olympe’s neck, the hairs that line it, raised in the cold draft of Solène’s room, the little birthmark that’s partially obscured by the shift.

 

And still, the scent of jasmine.

 

She tears herself away, not wanting to gawk. She didn’t see anything, she wouldn’t see anything. She saw absolutely nothing.

 

“Thank you,” Olympe says, head inclining towards her, brown hair pooling down her back, and Solène tries not to notice that she really _does_ have a beautiful neck, elegant and long. It was hard to believe that just a little while ago, it had almost been severed. 

 

“It was-It was nothing. Nothing at all.”  

 

She smiles softly, not the little smile she usually gives, the one that tends to hide a grimace, but a genuine smile, “Still...I would hardly call saving my life, giving me a place to rest, and acting as my maid ‘nothing.’ I owe you very much, Mademoiselle Mazurier, and I’m not sure that I can ever pay it in full.”

 

“No need. Really, I’m simply...glad that you’re safe. Marguerite was right, the streets are no place to be in right now. I’ve lived here for over a year and I still wouldn’t step foot on them.”  

 

“I still can hardly help but feel like an inconvenience.”

 

“And I have no idea why you keep thinking that I don’t want you-want you here. Believe me, you’d know if I didn’t.”

 

“A force of habit, I suppose. It can be...difficult, at times. In the Palace--They are all very kind, of course! However...there is always the feeling of being out of step, particularly when you weren’t there from your cradle.”

 

 _Impositions_ , _inconveniences_ , how much of Olympe’s life had been spent cutting herself to fit into what they wanted of her? (How much of Solène’s life, before fate had interfered? How much of Solène life would it have been, had it not?) And what kind of world did she live in that demanded that of her, day after day?

 

But she knows that it’s useless to bring that up, at least for now. It’s obvious that Olympe’s defensive of the Royal Family at the moment, it won’t help to meet her head on. Today, she was within a hair’s breadth of losing Olympe’s friendship; she’s not going to risk it again. She never wants to see that look of fear in her eyes again, much less because of _her_.

 

“Things change every moment, but what I said stands: I’ll never lie to you. I’m happy to have you, even if I wish the circumstances were different.”

 

Olympe dips her head, “I understand. Even so, thank you for being willing. And for your honesty as well, though I hope that you will forgive me not fully accustoming myself to it for some time. Now, do you need help?”   
  
“No!” Then, realizing how she sounds, she adds, trying to seem like the thought of Olympe touching her isn’t more likely to be her cause of death than every weapon and disease of the world combined, “No, no, it’s fine. I can manage. I’m used to it.”

 

“Oh, of course.”  

 

Solène tries not to be self-conscious the entire time as she gets out of her own clothes, tries not to think that Olympe’s there and seeing her undress, tries not to wonder what she sees when she looks at her. Absolutely not what she sees when she looks at Olympe. She loved Ronan, probably still does. Probably always will, at least a little. She loved him enough to marry him despite him having nothing but a hundred dreams that turned to ash at the walls of the Bastille, it could hardly have been a _simple_ love.

 

Which further solidifies that she never had a chance, and it’s important for her to remember that, because she can’t let herself stumble, especially now, when everything seems to be caught in transition and even the ground beneath her feet seems to be unstable. She can almost feel it when she finally crawls into bed beside Olympe finally, drawing the thin blanket around them, forcing herself to part with it when she notices Olympe shivering. Just slightly, but there nonetheless, far beneath the high room, far beneath the apartment, far beneath the horses and carriages that pass down the street and the people who are still rejoicing over the victory at Versailles, beneath centuries of marble and pavement and decay, straight to the very foundations of the city, shaking, rumbling.

 

But, beside her, she sees Olympe, eyes closed as she tries to go to sleep, a calm look on her face, moonlight spilling across her hair, her face, her lips, the scent of jasmine still floating around her, and it stills, for a moment at least, and it’s all the time the world seems to have stopped moving since this all began.

 

This sells it: she definitely has a problem.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For ONCE I honestly can't think of any HUGE historical notes to mention. Olympe's green Toho dress looks like it SHOULD be a Robe a l'Anglaise; it very clearly does open up at the front, given that you can see her petticoats very clearly, hence why I have Olympe undoing it herself even though, looking at the actual video, there's very clearly a place for it to open at the back, presumably because shockingly a stage show designs more for quick changes rather than historical accuracy. I know, the NEXT thing I'll be saying is that Peyrol's zippers are historically inaccurate. (Stays, however, weren't exclusively front lacing, and could be opened from the front, the back, or both on occasion, depending on personal preference. And because my personal preference was "TORTURE SOLÈNE" I wound up with this.) 
> 
> And yes, Madame de Tourzel really was nicknamed "Madame Severe" by Louis-Charles for her warm, easy-going personality.


End file.
